


Full Circle

by ThisShitMakesMeHard (Face_of_Poe)



Series: From Helmand to Harlan - Holidays with Tim and Raylan [3]
Category: Justified
Genre: Boyd is a sly motherfucker, Gen, Raylan is... Raylan., Season/Series 06, Thanksgiving, Tim is PISSED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 15:38:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5339468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Face_of_Poe/pseuds/ThisShitMakesMeHard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Rachel’s vote was that you had a falling out over a girl.” The grin twisted his mouth again. “That one panned out after all though, huh?” </p>
<p>“The many grievances I have come to take against Boyd Crowder, taking up with Ava was never one of them; granted, I lost a good deal o’respect for her, taking up with him.” </p>
<p>“Thereby completing the picture-perfect hillbilly love triangle.”</p>
<p>“Fuck you, Gutterson,” Raylan sighed wearily. </p>
<p>“Let’s just get Crowder and get you down to Florida before you have a midlife heteronormativity crisis, huh?” </p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Crowders do have a knack for playing the angles; Boyd goes for several.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full Circle

**Author's Note:**

> Set ambiguously in the first half of season 6 (before Ava tries to run). Because I felt like we needed something a little extra to bridge the jump into Raylan winding Boyd up at Ava's and Boyd's manic jealousy in the woods. Heh.

The sound of a vehicle crunching up the driveway drew Raylan to the front door. He could hear Tim moving down the stairs, but held out a hand to halt him as he caught sight of the truck, the all-too-familiar outline of its driver. “Boyd,” he frowned.

“Alone?” Tim asked, hovering back and out of sight, hand resting lightly on his holster.

“Looks to be.” Raylan unlocked the door. “I’ll see what he’s up to.”

Tim nodded, but because he was Tim, Raylan knew he’d be scouting the downstairs for the best vantage point over the two of them as they talked, ready to put a hole in Boyd at the slightest provocation. He didn’t particularly feel that he needed the cover, but Tim was always a good person to have at one’s back.

“Boyd,” Raylan acknowledged warily as he stepped down off the porch. “Somethin’ I can do for you?”

Boyd looked a bit off, the wily gleam in his eye reduced to a sort of wild glare. He moved with a pointed precision that suggested to Raylan that he’d been drinking, if he wasn’t already drunk. “Can’t just drop by the house of an old friend, Raylan Givens?” His eyes flickered over to the realtor sign. “’Course, you never did much care for this place, can’t imagine inheriting her was ever your desire.”

“Well deduced, Boyd. Let me rephrase my question: _what do you want_?”

“Honestly, Raylan?” Boyd came to stand at the bottom of the steps and turned, looking off into the distance with an expression that suggested he was seeing something in the past, instead. “I don’t know. As I suspect you only deign to grace Harlan with your presence for work, I wasn’t even sure you’d be here. Being Thanksgiving and all.”

He blinked, had entirely forgotten. Who was he going to spend it with, anyway, with Winona and Willa in Florida? “Well, there’s always overtime.”

“Spyin’ on me eating Ava’s turkey dinner?” Boyd asked mischievously. “What havoc do you possibly think me capable of today, of all days, Raylan? Banks are all closed, so gettin’ money’s out. Guess there’s always the _blowin’ shit up_ alternative.”

“Maybe I am just workin’ on the house and don’t give a hoot what you’re up to; didn’t until you showed up here, anyway.”

Boyd nodded to the SUV parked beside Raylan’s town car. “You bring company to do housework on Thanksgiving, Raylan Givens? A good friend you got there. I’ll hazard a guess that’s _my_ good friend Deputy Gutterson, keeping you company, he’s been following you around down here like a stray puppy these past couple o’weeks.” Raylan frowned, suddenly wary. “Don’t recall him ever paying our little corner of the world much mind, until he crossed paths with my friend Colt.”

Raylan pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaled a slow breath. “Leave it be, Boyd,” he sighed, and it was about the worst thing he could have said, as Boyd’s dull eyes gleamed with sudden interest.

“Feeling a bit protective of your young sidekick?”

“Don’t much need to be, he could kill you twelve ways before breakfast without breaking a sweat.”

Boyd laughed, hearty. “Well I am familiar with the deputy’s resume and, yes, I do believe that he could.” He sighed, eyes going distant again. “Rest assured, Raylan, I mean your friend no harm. It seems a waste of breath, as you’ve been resistant to the idea of a single grain of truth coming from these lips since you came back to Kentucky, but I wish you’d realize that I don’t mean you any, either.”

His eyes drifted back to Raylan’s, bright but sad, and Raylan felt his frown deepen. “I’d like to believe it,” was the best he could offer.

“Is it easier to continue to think me a monster?” Boyd asked softly. “So that you can more readily discard a better time between us?”

“Having my boss drop your file in my lap the night I landed back in this godforsaken state discarded anything good remaining there, Boyd. You threatening me, pulling on Ava, forcing me to shoot you, killed it stone dead.”

“Do you remember your last Thanksgiving in Harlan, Raylan?”

His jaw twitched. “Fuck you, Boyd.”

“My daddy was in jail. Your mama, sick as she was, insisted I come for dinner. Arlo left early, off to the VFW. You and I -”

Raylan dragged him in with a fistful of his jacket, hissed, “ _Fuck you_ , Boyd.”

He grinned, all sharp white teeth. “Better times.”

Raylan shoved him away harshly, sent him sprawling back on his ass, and turned and ran an anxious hand roughly through his hair. “That going to be your last, desperate weapon against me? All this time, I thought you buried that so deep under the neo-Nazi mold first, and then the god-fearin’ mold after, that you’d forgot it yourself."

“And how many times did you find yourself repeating _we dug coal together,_ like some sort of holy mantra, before you convinced yourself to forget it, too?” Boyd spoke from the ground, eyes fixed earnestly on Raylan. “I never forgot,” he added quietly as he climbed carefully to his feet. “And I’d never use it as a weapon.”

“You might believe that,” Raylan allowed, “but I don’t think you’re capable of meaning it.” He sat heavily on the steps leading up to the porch. “Get outta here, Boyd,” he gestured, suddenly bone-tired. “Just… just go home, alright?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Boyd to try not to wrap himself around a tree on the way, but a dark part of him acknowledged that it’d make his life a tiny bit easier, and he refrained. Boyd just watched him with a smile that was dangerous and sly, and possibly sincere since Raylan had lost all capability of separating those things in Boyd since returning to Kentucky.

He waited a few minutes after Boyd drove off again, fuming quietly on the porch, before slipping back inside to finish packing up for the drive back to Lexington. Tim was moving around in the dining room, packing away a couple of laptops, and he had the decency to at least pretend like he hadn’t gleaned any potentially scandalous information from the short conversation that had just taken place out front. Raylan took a moment to tap out a text to check up on Ava, but neglected to mention the encounter.

 

Shortly thereafter, they were on their way back north, driving separately and giving Raylan three long hours to stew in silence over the events of the last couple of days, Boyd’s unexpected appearance that morning. By midday, the roads were fairly empty, holiday travelers having already arrived at their respective destinations. Tim beat him back easily, had planned better to avoid needing to stop for gas, but the SUV was still there when Raylan arrived at the courthouse and let himself in the marshals’ entrance.

Tim was at his desk when Raylan walked in, at work on a report. Raylan almost suggested he leave it, take the rest of the day he’d been so far deprived by their unexpected late night turned overnight in Harlan; but then he realized that the younger marshal probably gave as few shits as he did about the holiday, possibly even fewer, and would just want to get the paperwork sorted and done. So he stashed his own gear, threw his bag in his locker, and went to his desk and kicked his feet up, waiting for Tim to finish the report so he could sign off on it and go home.

And drink. There was definitely bourbon in his future tonight.

Tim stopped typing and a few minutes later, Raylan heard the printer kicking into gear. Tim sat quietly a moment, head tilted back and staring up at the ceiling. Apparently the near-complete silence in which they’d been operating since Boyd’s visit finally proved too much.

“So you had a teenage fumble with Crowder. Who gives a shit?” Raylan groaned and tipped his hat down lower over his eyes, which he rubbed at harshly. “I mean… okay, Vasquez would flip. His. _Shit_.” He groaned louder. “Art would be royally pissed, but not his problem anymore. Rachel would be pissed about the case, but mostly pissed because she’d owe me money.”

Raylan looked up, startled. “Run that last one by me again?”

“Okay, no money was ever put on the table,” Tim conceded, standing to retrieve the printed report.

“But…”

“Come on, man,” Tim tossed the pages down on Raylan’s desk and crossed his arms over his chest, “he threw down with you so fast when you got here, and after you walked right up to his little Hitler church not a day after he plugged some sorry SOB in the back of the head? There was _some_ history there, more than _diggin’ coal_ , just could never decide what.” He leaned sideways against the desk, staring down at Raylan. “He wanted to shoot you so bad, why didn’t he do it then?” He grinned. “What’d you do to piss him off so bad at that first meeting?”

“My job,” Raylan bit, suddenly wanting nothing more than to wipe the shit-eating smirk off Tim’s face.

The smile widened though. “He try to draw you in, find the Harlan in you, after you’d spent twenty years trying to scrub yourself clean of it?” Raylan found himself on his feet, looming over Tim and staring him down, not sure when he’d made the decision to stand or commanded his muscles to make it happen. Tim snorted softly at the posturing and took a step back from the desk. “Why didn’t you just fucking tell Art? He’d a probably gotten you out of the office soon as possible, once he stopped laughin’ or swearin’.”

“What’s it say that it never even occurred?” Raylan asked softly.

Tim watched him a moment, frown playing lightly across his lips, until he shrugged and returned to his desk for his keys. “Could be anything. Embarrassed that he became what he did. Afraid that Art would judge you for it. Ashamed o’yourself for it. Fuck if I know.”

“Don’t be a dick.”

“Wasn’t tryin’ to be.” Tim shifted gears, turned back and headed towards the locker room after casting about for his jacket at his desk and coming up empty handed.

Raylan watched him disappear, swore, and then followed, paperwork forgotten on his desk. “I ain’t _ashamed_ ,” he found himself insisting as he opened the door. Tim was pulling his jacket out of his locker and slammed the door, turning with a forcibly neutral expression. “All kinds of reasons not to talk about it, don’t mean I think there’s something _wrong_ with it.”

“Hey, dude,” Tim held his hands up defensively, “you’re talking to the poster-boy for sexual repression, I ain’t gonna call you on shit.”

“I’m not _repressed_.” Why not dig the hole just a _little_ deeper? “I just… it was just him, alright? And it wasn’t really anything. Moved out and… moved on.”

That fixed, manic sort of grin was settled firmly on Tim’s face now though. “I can’t even tell what you’re trying to convince me of. You think I give a shit who you fuck?”

“I think you gave plenty of shits when it affected our work.”

“Right,” Tim smacked his forehead, like he was just remembering the epic clusterfuck that had been Boyd’s release from prison. “So is your spurned teenage lover going to suddenly throw that in your face soon as we make our case against him?”

Raylan worked his jaw a moment, frustrated by the angry challenge in Tim’s eyes. “I don’t know,” he admitted at last. “I… no, I don’t think so. Not because he wouldn’t, but because he can’t ever prove it and who would believe it if I denied it?” He huffed a humorless laugh. “You and Rachel, apparently.”

“Just me,” Tim corrected blandly, “Rachel’s vote was that you had a falling out over a girl.” The grin twisted his mouth again. “That one panned out after all though, huh?”

“The many grievances I have come to take against Boyd Crowder, taking up with Ava was never one of them; granted, I lost a good deal o’respect for _her_ , taking up with _him_.”

“Thereby completing the picture-perfect hillbilly love triangle.”

“Fuck you, Gutterson,” Raylan sighed wearily.

“Let’s just get Crowder and get you down to Florida before you have a midlife heteronormativity crisis, huh?”

Tim was not usually so openly derisive, preferred a more subtle wit while quietly cataloguing his surroundings. His annoyance today hearkened back to that day he’d been charged with watching over Raylan, angry he couldn’t even retaliate for being ditched.

_I ain’t telling Art, by the way, ‘cause that’d be my ass, too_.

Raylan threw up a hand, helpless. “What do you want me to do?”

Tim shoved past him and snarled, “ _Your fucking job_ ,” each word spoken slowly, concisely. Raylan seized him by an elbow and hauled him around, bodily shoving him against the row of lockers. “You sure this is your smartest move?” Tim’s muscles tensed, like he was forcing down the instinct to retaliate.

“You’re a fucking hypocrite,” Raylan murmured. “What the fuck happened with Colton Rhodes, huh?”

“I never fucked Colton Rhodes,” Tim fired back.

“Well, good, because that’d have been even more awkward when you used your badge to justify a bit of personal revenge.”

Tim smiled dangerously. “Always did wonder how much of that the whore picked up on.”

“Enough,” Raylan snapped, “You’re lucky she…” He trailed away though, thinking, realizing the fucking obvious that he’s somehow missed for the last _year_. “Son of a bitch.”

“ _There_ you go.”

He released Tim’s elbow, ran his hand over his face. “If Ellen May picked up that much, then Ava… that sly son of a bitch. He knew you were watching. Windin’ me up about one thing and threatenin’ you about another.”

“He’s just shaking the tree,” Tim sagged a bit, the only betrayal of the tension he’d probably been feeling since that morning. “Knows he knows something, but never could figure out what it was worth.”

Not the first time Boyd had done so either. _I believe we have a friend in common; or should I say_ had _._

_Oh, I’m not sure I’d call him a friend._

_Well I’m not sure he would, either._

“Well – what’s it worth?”

“Enough,” Tim repeated back to him just as snidely. “But it ain’t something he’s going to want his name near, even if he does figure it out.” Raylan opened his mouth to counter the point, but Tim leaned in, snagged a fistful of his shirt and growled, “Before you even _think_ of saying anything right now, do I need to remind you about Nicky goddamn Augustine? At least my fuckups are only going to come back to bite _me_ on the ass, not the entire goddamn office.”

“He can’t -”

“I know you were in Harlan that night!” Tim exploded. “How’s it Crowder wasn’t there when Ava got arrested with the body? Did he set the meet, drive you to the fucking tarmac?” Raylan sucked in a steadying breath through his nose when Tim released his grip. “Jesus _Christ_ , Raylan.” He gave him a last dismissive shake of the head and tried to sidle sideways out of the space he’d been crowded into. Raylan put out an arm to halt his progress. “You put another hand on me, we are gonna have some serious goddamn problems.”

He let up, backed away. Tim was out the door in a flash back into the bullpen, not even sparing a glance backwards as he called, “Sign the fucking report,” just before the door closed behind him.

 

 

Tim was sitting on a bench outside the office by the elevators when Raylan finally left ten minutes later. He watched him quietly, unnervingly, as Raylan pressed the button and waited, and then rose and slid smoothly into the elevator behind him before the doors closed.

They stood in opposite corners like strangers, mirrored postures with their arms crossed over, chins tilted down to their chests. When the car was between the last two floors of their descent, Tim reached out and flipped the emergency stop switch, and Raylan sighed and rubbed at his eyes tiredly. “Did you just lure me into a confined space to beat the shit out of me? That’s just unsporting, Tim, at least give a man a chance to run away.”

“Think you could outrun me, old man?”

“…No.”

“Well, then.” He leaned his head back against the wall with a soft thud. “Crowder’s getting desperate. Looking for an angle, any angle, that’ll keep him out of prison or afford him a bargaining chip when he gets there.”

“He’s got shit.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Tim straightened and stared earnestly at Raylan. “So why give him exactly what he’s after?”

Raylan is a big enough person to bite his tongue on the impulse to say _you started it_. “Agreed,” he sighed. “I apologize.” Tim blinked at him, probably surprised by the ready admission. “For the, you know. Manhandling.”

He grinned slyly. “So long as you realize I could’a had you on your ass in a heartbeat.”

“I do realize that, yes.”

“Well, okay then.”

The elevator finished its descent and they made their way to the lot in a much easier silence. Tim peeled off to head to his vehicle, but Raylan called after him before he got too far. “Tim?” He slowed, half-turned, but didn’t fully stop. “It’s Thanksgiving, you know.” His brow furrowed. “Got plans?”

“Oh yeah, hordes of relatives been waiting for me to carve the bird.”

“…You fucking with me?”

Tim sighed. “Yes, Raylan.”

“I know where we can get bad Chinese takeout.”

Tim stared a long minute, expression carefully controlled, and Raylan wondered if he’d overstepped, after the terse day they’d had. But then the younger man offered, “I know where we can get bourbon.”

“My place or yours?”

“Mine has furniture, so.” Raylan shrugged, had to give him that. “Come over in a couple hours?”

“Will do.”

“Crab Rangoon.”

“Pretentious.”

“Fuck you.”

“When that heteronormativity crisis strikes, you’ll be my first call.”

Tim just snorted and shook his head.

**Author's Note:**

> The next story in this series (Miami, time-jump) will be goofier, should be seeing that this weekend-ish.


End file.
